


evanstan ficlets

by ninemoons42



Category: Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Books, Foreplay, Gen, High Fantasy, Inspired By Tumblr, Inspired by Music, Inspired by Photography, Kitten Sebastian Stan, La Diada di Sant Jordi, Les Misérables References, M/M, Musicals, Owl Sebastian Stan, References to Shakespeare, Request Meme, Richard III - Freeform, Roses, Sleeping Together, St. George's Day, Tea Ceremony, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 17:04:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 5,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2236737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I don't write Evanstan ficlets as often as I do MCU-based stuff, but as with the WS collection I thought it would be a good idea to have everything all in just the one place. Easier to find, and all that. </p><p>Repeating some of the other notes from the WS collection:</p><p>The ficlets are not connected to each other unless otherwise stated, and may often, as so happens in AUs, wind up contradicting each other.</p><p>Guest stars from all over Marvel (and some who may not even be from those universes) may appear.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. we rise and fall

**Author's Note:**

> I don't write Evanstan ficlets as often as I do MCU-based stuff, but as with the WS collection I thought it would be a good idea to have everything all in just the one place. Easier to find, and all that. 
> 
> Repeating some of the other notes from the WS collection:
> 
> The ficlets are not connected to each other unless otherwise stated, and may often, as so happens in AUs, wind up contradicting each other.
> 
> Guest stars from all over Marvel (and some who may not even be from those universes) may appear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a ficlet request meme. Prompt: Eddard Stark (Knights and castles, lords/ladies and bannermen)

The stars emerge and the moon bursts forth at last, and the clouds are fleeing into the west, and Christopher has been riding for far too long. He can no longer really feel the aches and the pains of him: the broken bones ill-set, the myriad bruises, the blood that has slowly dried and frozen on his hands. Red gloves, he thinks, as he glances at his gauntlets. Red on his skin, red like the banners of the man he’s killed.

Slayer, he’ll be called after this. Slayer. Betrayer. 

Would the dead man be remembered for who he truly was - for the impaled and for the crushed and for the burned - or would the dead man be remembered as a saint?

The wind howls, long and lonely moan, and Christopher can only keep spurring his horse onward.

Once, a long time ago, he’d been promised shelter. Succor. A place to go, should all things be lost, should his life be declared forfeit.

Once, a long time ago, he had known someone powerful and kind all at once. A youth who burned with bright ambition, with bright determination, with bright fire in the palms of his hands.

Christopher has had no word of that youth - or surely he must be a man now, a better man than Christopher could have ever been. Battered armor. A horse on its last legs. Himself mired in despair. The bearer of a traitor’s blade, wielded to spare thousands from greater horrors.

A shallow river rippling in the night. A hill in the distance, and perched atop, a high-towered castle.

Christopher cannot draw near.

He turns back along the path, and that is when he looks up - into fire, bright and welcome, piercing the starry night.

Bright eyes, bright flame, an incredulous smile. “It’s you,” whispers a voice, well-remembered. “ _It’s you._ You’re here. You’ve come back. Just as you promised.”

Christopher stares, as the man with the fire in his hands comes closer, beckoning, almost unreal. “I remember you,” he manages to say. “You said you would save me.”

"If you need it."

And Christopher dares, Christopher reaches out, and the fire in the man’s hand does not burn him now, as it did not burn him on another moonlit night.

"Yes. Do you need to be saved, Christopher?"

Christopher remembers. “Sebastian. Yes. Save me. I have no other to turn to.”

A smile, sweet and powerful and touched by fire.


	2. green tea at noon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visual inspiration from [HERE](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/95901897141/sorry-for-the-hijack-and-for-turning-this-into): a photograph of a bowl used in Japanese tea ceremony.
> 
> Musical inspiration from [HERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L24Nb4CJzV4): Kimoto Kaori performs a song called "Tegoto" on the koto.

Chris watches Sebastian carefully, and wonders.

It’s good to be back in Japan, though he’s once again taken aback by the vagaries of the summer temperatures and the sweetly soporific waves of cicada song, and he has no idea why he’s been asked to wear his best suit and Sebastian does not seem troubled at all.

So he leans in, and whispers, “Please tell me you know where they’re taking us.”

Sebastian looks up from his mobile phone, and smiles, and shakes his head. “I’m not exactly familiar with places and addresses around here - it’s one of my first visits, after all, isn’t it? But I do know _what_ we’re about to do.”

Chris resists the urge to fiddle with his tie, because it’s already been knotted very professionally by one of the assistants, and he doesn’t want to mess up the guy’s work. “Share with the rest of the class?”

Sebastian nods, once. “We’re dressed up, and it’s almost noon, and this is not going to be a public event because if it is, we’d be heading into the heart of downtown. As we are going into a rather nice neighborhood I’m starting to think it might be a tea ceremony of some kind.”

That throws Chris for a loop. “Tea ceremony? I know what that is, but - I’ve never been to one before. I’ve never been briefed on what to do.” He immediately wishes he could fidget some more. Anxiety starts to claw at him, invisible beneath the fine material of his suit jacket - 

"Chris," Sebastian says.

Chris takes a deep breath, and makes himself calm down, and makes himself look into Sebastian’s eyes, placid and gentle and encouraging. “If I tell you to relax, you won’t,” Sebastian says, “so instead I will tell you this: _follow my lead_. All right?”

"So you know what we’re about to do?" Chris asks.

"I think I don’t know much about it yet. But I can observe, and I can show you what I see, and you can do as I do. Will that help?"

And Chris trusts him, can’t _help_ but trust him, and he nods, swallows, and almost jumps out of his skin when Sebastian takes his hand and squeezes, very gently, just enough to let Chris know he’s there.

Sebastian, he learns during the ceremony, is very good at bowing, down to the way he puts his hands on the shining mats and the way he closes his eyes.

And somehow Sebastian knows what to do, inexpertly, but he knows: he knows about admiring the frankly gorgeous gray and gold bowl that is passed to him, and he knows about turning the bowl and looking at that impossibly green froth on the edges of thick tea.

Sebastian carefully passes him the bowl, and Chris reaches out to cup his hands around Sebastian’s, and he bows to Sebastian and bows to their host and turns the bowl, and he’s aware of Sebastian’s eyes on him as he drinks.


	3. the rhythm of your body

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An expansion of the original ficlet and luninosity's comments [HERE](http://luninosity.tumblr.com/post/97229092639/chris-wakes-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-to-soft).

Chris opens his eyes. Middle-of-the-night glare of numbers from the clock next to his side of the bed. He can't remember what the dream was about - he only knows that it's left him flushed, left his heart rabbit-leaping from fear. One hand curled into the sheets in a fist, his knuckles laced with pain, and he has to make himself open that hand.

Distractions. He needs to focus on something. Get out of his own head.

A soft sound from very close by, and the quiet rustle of movement and the crumpled sheets. The same glaring clock-light turns inexplicably warm when it illuminates the curve of Sebastian's shoulder, bare skin and taut muscle, though he seems nowhere near tense as he turns over. As he rolls back towards Chris.

And Chris, charmed and grateful into the bargain, puts his arm around what he thinks is a Sebastian still wrapped in the soft gentle lengths of sleep. He leans in, and kisses Sebastian, carefully, not wanting him to wake: the lines in Sebastian's face are temporarily wiped away. 

In the morning there'll be expressions, fleeting funny faces, and the beloved brightness of his smile. 

Sebastian is sleep-slack and softly clinging, and Chris lets himself be pulled in, and he feels safe, here, safe within the circle of Sebastian's soft breaths.

Except - that's not just a breath, against his throat. 

Sweet sharp demand: Sebastian's mouth ghosting deliberately up and down Chris's skin.

Chris shivers, and tilts his head, and Sebastian isn't asleep, not any more. He can't be. Teasing, stroking: a careful application of teeth, scraping gently over Chris's Adam's apple. 

Sebastian opens his eyes, suddenly, and looks Chris right in the face.

He's wide awake. An imp's smile. And he still asks for permission: "Can I?"

Chris nods assent, wordless, beyond relieved, and - as he runs his hand up Sebastian's arm, as he yields to a gentle push, falling over onto his back.

How can he forget that Sebastian sleeps naked most nights? He's far too aware of that now and he loves it. He wants more. He can't help but groan when Sebastian straddles him, and his eyes can't help but fall to the juncture of Sebastian's thighs. Sweat and dark strands and hard heat. He fits his hand around Sebastian's cock and his breath catches on Sebastian's quiet gasp.

Chris is hard, suddenly, and he's lightheaded and blinking shocked stars away, and Sebastian is poised above him, beautiful, in nothing but a dark smile and equally dark promises.

Sebastian smiles and crooks a finger at him. Wordless proprietary.

Chris goes, falls into that drugging kiss, gives himself over.


	4. tiny fluffly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gifset and prompt [HERE](http://luninosity.tumblr.com/post/97628118664/ohcaptainmycaptain1918-shanology-toromind).

Chris sleeps lightly these days, and maybe he should be worried about it and he actually is, because he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop and for the reviews to turn negative - but so far people seem to at least _not-hate_ his movie, and maybe he’ll have to take that for now, because maybe good reviews and a good box-office might mean he’ll get to do something like it all over again. He’s still adrenaline-rushing from the nights of shooting. New York City on the move all around his team.

He totters sleepily through the morning sunlight, wooden floors warming beneath his feet, and when he opens the door so he can collect his mail from the actual mailbox in the actual yard he stops dead because there’s a tiny and insistent and high-pitched cry right at his toes.

Huge dark eyes and delicate whiskers all over the place, ginger fur wreathed in warmth and sun, and again and again the kitten mewls at him, insistently winning.

The kitten’s been coming closer every day. Chris first saw it across the street, daintily stalking a butterfly only to have it land between its outstandingly oversized ears; yesterday, when he’d come in from a late night, the kitten had been nothing more than a twitch of tail next to the mailbox.

Now it’s here on Chris’s doorstep.

"Good morning," Chris says to the kitten. He motions the kitten inside. "Make yourself at home, I’ll be right with you, just getting the mail."

The kitten butts up against his foot - and once again Chris sees how _small_ it is, nose to tail - and saunters casually through the door.

He’s on his way back in and trying to remember if he has _anything_ to offer the kitten when - _meow, meow!_ \- and the sound is coming from the couch.

"Sneaky," Chris says, admiringly, and the sun shines on the ginger fur, makes the kitten almost glow, and now that he can get closer he can see sweet dark eyes and the tiniest pointy teeth, a paw batting at him as if beckoning him closer, and he scoops the kitten up in one hand and it purrs, rumbles, content.

Oh. It has a name tag. A soft ribbon collar.

The name on the tag is _Sebastian_.


	5. a feathered friend from out of the night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I had a plotbunny of Sebastian Stan as an owl. Specifically, [THIS OWL](http://38.media.tumblr.com/4ef5054aa5692b484a0c5dbd51e33567/tumblr_nctkusUGD31qlwvv2o1_400.jpg), an Eastern screech owl (rufous morph).

Chris paces.

It’s edging on past the blue haze of midnight, and he’s arranged and rearranged his books and his papers and the pile of scripts waiting for him at least five times already. The kitchen he doesn’t use is spotless, and the bathroom’s sparkling and clean, and he’s still sitting up in his bed and there’s no one to talk to, no one to sit with.

He’s running on fumes, on greasy Chinese and catnaps and the distant euphoria of his early morning runs, when he just makes himself move and forces the voices in his head to go silent.

There’s a window in his bedroom that he keeps open, partly for the breezes and partly for the chorus of night-time voices: owls, apparently, and frogs and toads and the occasional chattering run of mice.

There’s something on the windowsill, now, and he realizes after a moment that he’s been staring into those wide eyes for several moments - it’s just that he hadn’t been paying attention - he doesn’t even know when the bird showed up.

Red plumage and streaks of white and black, and tufts up near the top of the head that make Chris think of ears. The owl looks at him, fearless and imperious and - in some indefinable manner - _kind_. It ruffles up its feathers, and the round puff of it shivers into splintered feather-edges, and Chris laughs.

The owl hoots at him.

Chris stops, stares, and he’s left holding his breath because in one quicksilver movement the owl launches itself off its perch and comes to rest on the floor next to his sock-clad feet.

(He has to suppress the urge to apologize for the hole that is steadily unraveling the ankle of the left sock.)

The owl hoots at him, again, more softly this time.

“I have no idea how you got here,” Chris whispers, “and I have no idea why you think I’d be a nice person and come right in here - ”

_Hoot._

Chris casts around, hurriedly, for something to wrap around his arm, and he settles for one of his pillowcases, and he says, “Please don’t scratch me,” and he bends to the owl and offers him that reinforced limb.

A flash of spread wings, beating, swift powerful rush, and the owl steps up and onto Chris’s arm, and it immediately tucks itself in and closes its eyes.

Chris stares at the bird, dumbfounded.

And, hesitantly, he smoothes a fingertip over the owl’s head. Fine bone under his touch, soft soft feathers.

The owl trills, very quietly.

And not even Chris’s movements as he crosses the room to a squashy armchair and sits down and pulls a blanket over his lap wake or dislodge the bird - it seems perfectly content - and Chris has the very, very irrational urge to kiss it.

Eventually he sleeps.

The owl is still there when he wakes, having forsaken his forearm for the gap between him and the corner of the armchair, and it breathes softly like a beating heart against his ribs, calm and trusting, and what else can Chris say?

“Thank you,” he whispers.


	6. combat boots and one hell of a weapon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by the Call of Duty Online trailer with Chris Evans in.

It’s the excess of periods in the subject line of the email that makes Sebastian squint, and look carefully around at the cool silver curtains of light streaming in through the windows of his apartment, and he acts on the sudden instinct to move his laptop: he decamps from the couch and wraps himself in his softly battered comforter, in the customary excess of blankets piled on his bed.

Chris is on his way. Chris is even now driving from Boston and the cheerful ruckus of his family, headed to New York City, where Sebastian has made private plans for the ball drop and a glass or two or ten of champagne, for a handful of bright sparklers and several layers of sweaters and at least three pairs of socks.

But there’s this email, and though Chris isn’t here Sebastian can nearly hear the apprehension in the bits and bytes of the subject line, as though Chris were standing next to the bed, shuffling fit to run a mile and moving not an inch.

He clicks. Chris’s disjointed sentences. _So this is a thing that happened. I told you about it. When I went to China. Not just to play golf, right, because there was this extra other thing. You can laugh at me, I promise, I want to laugh at myself too. So fuckin’ ridiculous._

The oaths are out of Sebastian’s mouth before he can really think about them: Chris _is_ ridiculous but in the way that makes Sebastian want to pin him to the bedclothes and never let him up, never let him leave. 

A video, embedded. Sebastian takes a deep breath, and hits Play. 

Fatigues, tracer rounds, the accoutrements of urban war. Helicopter _thwap thwap thwap_ , and a woman looking for a way out, asking her comrades for suggestions - 

A man in a very tight t-shirt with some kind of crest on one stretched-thin sleeve. Something big and black and matte in his hands, as he braces in a half-crouch and - fires. And cut to “You guys ready?”

Sebastian cannot decide whether he’s staring at the tactical armor or at the black gloves or at the stray curl of hair fallen out of alignment.

All he knows is that it must be Chris, and Chris is kitted out like _that_ , and Sebastian’s mouth’s gone dry. Yes, it’s just a quick ad for some sort of game, it’s all make-believe, but - he _had_ been staring at Chris’s hands working over gun and shield and the controls of a motorbike on a set dressed up like World War II, and realized that he was worse than head over heels in lust.

Love at first sight with Chris wearing an oversized white A on his forehead, little white wings.

He’ll call Chris in a minute. He wants to watch that clip again. Wants to ask if Chris kept anything from _that_ set.

He groans, laughs softly, knows he’s red in the face, knows he’s too warm suddenly. 

Ridiculous? No. Not in the least. He’ll tell Chris so. Or _show_ him so.

He hits Play again, and blushes as he touches himself.


	7. a song like a soaring soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by Josh Groban's rendition of "Bring Him Home" [HERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXnRf3TQcpk).
> 
> Originally on Tumblr [HERE](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/116098647311/inspired-by-this-for-luninosity).

“So what do you think,” Scott asks as they amble down the aisle. Red-cushioned seats and old-fashioned gilt. Scott’s voice is a hush that fills the theater up anyway, so commanding is the presence he’s been chosen to portray – a red coat and a wig of seraphic blond curls, a cockade in three colors pinned upon his breast.

Chris looks around. “Seems kind of small, for this kind of thing.”

“It’s a concert, big brother booby, we’re not actually going to be building a barricade or something. Or we _are_ , sort of, because you’ll be painting it.”

Any response Chris might make is cut off by a voice from the back: “Sebastian? Let’s do a quick rehearsal?”

“ _Da_ ,” says a voice from the stage, and Chris momentarily forgets about his smock and his paint stains and the pencil stuck behind his ear when a beautiful young man steps up to the microphone at center stage. 

Head down, hands clasped behind his back, a greatcoat in mourning blue and the weight of the world on his shoulders, gorgeously incongruous. 

A familiar sweet and sad melody. Mournful and swelling.

The young man begins to sing: _God on high, hear my prayer / In my need, you have always been there...._

Chris feels a tear escape his eye and soon doesn’t think of it, because the singer goes on, pleading and prayerful, and he feels like his heart is being lifted up on that beautiful unexpected voice, such gravitas and such youth. Magnificently held notes. Hands lifting, voice lifting, the familiar words soaring and filling the theater with whispering yearning hallelujahs of echoes.

After the last long note that fades into a tremulous amen of silence the beautiful young man smiles, and says, as if he hasn’t just sung his heart out to an empty theater, “How was that?”

And Chris can’t help but clap. He’s just one person, but the song – it deserves to be appreciated. He can’t just think of it as a masterful rehearsal. 

“Thank you,” the beautiful young man calls from the stage. A kiss, blown, impulsive and playful.

“Oh my god,” Scott says.

(The singer, the beautiful young man who sang “Bring Him Home”, is named Sebastian.)


	8. not quite the right saint, but close enough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for St George's Day / La Diada di Sant Jordi, 23 April.

A quiet _ping_ of a notification, and Chris could hear it more clearly than the interview questions, and he excused himself and headed to the washroom, and wondered what was going on.

Another _ping_ as he entered the men’s room, and then one more.

He swiped at the screen of his phone and found multiple messages, all from one contact.

Instagram links.

Mystified, Chris clicked on the first one: a medal, worn and stained and scratched, and he reached for his own little keepsake and ran his fingers over the patient and protective metal. 

The medal in the photograph showed an almost-familiar image: a dragon, and confronting it, armored and weaponed, a knight. Underneath a brief caption. _Saint George._

The second link: an extravagant arrangement of roses, bright blood red, and Chris covered his mouth with his free hand because he recognized the smile that was reflected in the corner of the photograph: a familiar jawline and a beautiful bright impish spark.

The third link: and Chris laughed out loud, now, because the books in the stack were all _his_ , and he’d wondered where they’d gone but now he knew who’d been pilfering from him – a glad loan – Sebastian’s coffee table and one of Sebastian’s mugs, and Chris could imagine the waft of sweetness from its stained lip and he wanted to be the mug, that could touch Sebastian’s mouth with such lingering sugar-stains.

Trembling hand as he called Sebastian. This press round would soon be over, and he would be able to go home.


	9. missing you

Sebastian crosses his arms, nods, tilts his head at his patient. Who unbuckles herself from the examination chair, and is now free-floating slowly and meanderingly past him, already on her way out of the cramped half-space that they call the medical station on ISS. “Still twinges around the knees, though,” she calls back over her shoulder.

“Take it easy on the exercise,” Sebastian tells her as he tucks his tablet underneath his arm and prepares to follow her. “And don’t get started on your experiment until you’re healed.”

“You’re no fun,” is the response that he gets, that and a quiet laugh, and he waves at her as she heads in the general direction of the crew quarters. He makes a note to himself to talk to the Commander, though the thought lingers in his mind for just a moment, because he’s just passed a laptop counting down the hours in CET and he’s got to hurry to the Cupola.

He’s got another appointment.

Charger and wires floating up from his pockets when he turns them inside-out, and he snatches things out of the air and plugs in and gets cozy. Earth spins ponderously just above him. Cloud formations, a hurricane forming off the coast of Florida, a typhoon getting started in the Pacific Ocean. He clicks his tongue at the idea of storms and shivering, and taps at his tablet’s screen, pulling up Skype.

_Ring._

Sebastian smiles when the cameras blur and turn into – his face in the smaller square, and Chris’s in the larger one. 

“Hi,” Chris mumbles around sips from a large cup. It is, in fact, Sebastian’s cup: the one he left behind on Earth because it was ceramic and carefully glued back together after some mishap or another. “Sorry.”

“Still under the weather?” Sebastian asks. He bites his lip against his sympathy. He’d like nothing more than to reach for Chris and hold him close, congestion and red cheeks and all. 

“Barely got any sleep at all.” The sentence is punctuated by several sneezes.

Sebastian feels his eyes well up with tears.

“Don’t cry,” Chris says.

“I just miss you.”

“I miss you so so fucking much.”

“You need someone to hold you tight.”

“And you need someone to kiss you,” Chris says. 

“God, yes.”

“Just a few more weeks, right?”

Sebastian has to nod. He’s leaving ISS in twenty-three days. He’s been saying goodbye to the nooks and crannies of the space station, the views of the stars, even the definitely unusual galley that provides their meals. 

On the other hand, he misses Earth. Hot dogs and proper coffee and blueberries. Chris. The two of them in their bed, reading and whispering.

“Promise me something,” he says, touching a fingertip against the grainy image of Chris. 

“Anything.”

“When they let me go home, promise me you’re not letting me go for a few days.”

Chris smiles, watery and sweet. “Try a week. Maybe two.”

“Yes please.” 

Then Chris lets out a sound that’s a confused jumble of a yawn and a sneeze, and Sebastian covers his mouth with his hand, then says, “Go back to sleep.”

“I will, I promise.”

“I love you,” Sebastian says.

“And I love you even when I’m gross and covered in snot and tissues.”

“Even then,” Sebastian laughs, and then the connection’s lost but at least he’s made Chris laugh, too. It’ll have to hold him. It’ll have to hold them both.


	10. my kingdom for a....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> luninosity talked about Sebastian Stan the Shakespeare nerd last night. I was driven to write this as a result.

“I don’t know why you need another spear carrier, the ladies in your company are already numerous and Amazonian, and I am covered in paint and gunk,” Chris hisses as he struggles into ill-fitting leathers.

“The ladies in my company are already armored up or haven’t you noticed all of the _enemy generals_ are ladies?” is Scott’s reply, muffled and distracted as he reapplies his stage makeup. “Not to mention all the clergy?”

“I’m surprised the Princes in the Tower aren’t being played by women,” Chris growls.

“Shut up. Spear carrier. We just need bodies on the stage okay?”

And they hurry out to where the director is yelling things about being stage left and stage right. The director asks him to change from a spear to a shield –- that makes Chris side-eye him –- and then to a war-hammer, which is really just someone’s repurposed sledgehammer. “Why this?”

“Because,” the director replies, bright flash of smile against deep-brown skin. 

Someone pretends to do a fanfare as a kazoo -– Chris thinks it might be the diminutive redhead in the elaborate crowned helm of Queen Margaret -– and then a man in black armor takes the stage, and drops with a _clang_ to his knees, and looks up at the director with a sure and steady light in his eyes. “Ghost scene?”

“Sometime after,” the director says. “We’re setting up.”

“Ready when you are,” is the easy reply.

Chris gets pushed around some more, gets positioned and repositioned, and finally he’s asked to loom threateningly over the man in the black armor and he doesn’t know what makes him say, “I’m really just here as stage dressing, don’t mind me, if you’re trying to get into the acting headspace thing –- ”

He gets a sweet smile for that, a smile that is so strange against the forbidding black and cracked armor. “No one is just stage dressing; you’re the star of your show, and I just happen to be the lead in this one.”

“Why actual fucking Richard of Gloucester in the first place?”

“He’s complicated,” the man in the black armor says. “I like complicated characters. Miming being hunchbacked and all that. Which I don’t believe he is, so I’m deliberately being inconsistent in terms of how I move.”

“I saw.” Chris remembers this man standing atop pretend crenellated walls, straight-backed and gesturing beatifically at an imaginary audience -– and he also remembers this man deliberately shrunken down as he stumbled over sweet words in conversation with one of the other ladies in the cast. 

“Sebastian,” the director says, with a thumbs-up.

The man in the armor grins, returns the gesture. 

Looks back up at Chris, and those eyes are so blue blue blue. “Could I ask you to do something for me?”

“Anything,” Chris says, thoroughly disarmed in only the metaphorical and mental sense. He’d even act on stage for this guy, if he asked.

And that turns out to be exactly what Sebastian wants, because he says, “Can you -– ah –- sort of brandish that hammer at me?”

“It’s a heavy hammer,” Chris says, heart pounding because _yes_ Sebastian is wearing armor but _no_ *no hitting the people on this stage*.

“I know. I can take it.” A reassuring tilt of the head. “I just want the menace. So I can deliver the lines.”

Oh God, and Chris mutters the words, and he glances hopelessly at an oblivious Scott –- and he lifts the hammer.

“Thank you,” Sebastian says as he crouches, and suddenly he’s glowering and there’s a grim twist to his mouth and he intones, 

Give me another horse: bind up my wounds.  
Have mercy, Jesu!–Soft! I did but dream.  
O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!  
The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight.  
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.  
What do I fear? myself? there’s none else by:  
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.  
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:  
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:  
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?  
Alack. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good  
That I myself have done unto myself?  
O, no! alas, I rather hate myself  
For hateful deeds committed by myself!

Chris nearly jumps away in shock. Gone the smile and gone the affable lines crinkling at the corners of Sebastian’s eyes. The man on his knees is pure malice. 

“Oh my god,” he says again, and he honestly has to suppress the urge to run for his life.

“Okay, break,” the director says, and just like that –- Sebastian is smiling again, is getting to his feet.

“Gave you a scare, sorry,” he says.

Chris gapes at him, and says, “You’re amazing.”


	11. wind sand stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by TRAPPIST-1, because you know these guys are massive space dorks.

He rushes through baggage claim and customs with tapping toes and so many more fidgets than he normally would, and he chews at the insides of his cheeks as he gets his passport re-stamped and only feels a small twitch of anxiety, because there are all these concerns about immigration and people who are getting inconvenienced in passing through these borders, and he resolves to make up for all of his seeming nonchalance or lack of caring later. Later, when he’s done with fizzing and a different kind of happiness, happiness that causes butterflies not just in his stomach but in all of his limbs as well -– because the news that’s gotten splashed all over certain sections of the Internet is the best sort of news, the news he’s spent years and years waiting and hoping for, and this time he’ll have someone guaranteed to share it.

He stops off at a coffee shop just before he barrels out headlong toward his hired car: asks the barista, very politely and from beneath the cover of a downturned hat-brim, for coffees decorated with constellations -– he doesn’t ask for specifics, just for the best that the shop can do, and he smiles when he peeks into the tall paper cups and sees Orion in microfoam: he’s always loved the prominence of those three stars in Orion’s Belt in the night sky, and the thought of a nebula, famous and silently colorful and fecund.

Boston, as always, is full of noise and smells and people and it gives him a different kind of electric charge to come here, visiting, and maybe in the future he’ll settle here in some way or another. Park a small piano in a cozy apartment with a bed built for two or maybe three. Dogs are good house-warming companions, and he might think about getting one of his own, when he’s a little more ready.

For now: Sebastian bypasses the door of the place that he habitually rents when he’s here and when it’s available, without even dropping off his bags. The bulk of his coat still carries a faint lingering whiff of the smells of Paris, from where he’d taken his connecting flight. He still maybe owes some friends some good wine, some fantastic sweet treats, and he’ll order a box of macarons when he’s got a moment, but right now he’s focused on his coffees and the familiar broad-shouldered silhouette on the rooftop. Hands that move with practiced delicacy and ease over a battered and beautifully patinated telescope. This is one of the few places where he, and the man he’s making a beeline for, can get away from the anxiety and the intrusive thoughts.

Stars wheeling overhead, silent and faraway and never sitting in judgement: and now, one of those stars is more than just a star because it is also a sun. A sun for seven planets. He’s giddy at the thought of living on a planet from which other planets are easily visible. He could burst with the thought.

He puts the coffees down. His bags and his coat and his cap and his phone. Rushes forward, to a welcome of a smile, sweetly anticipating. “Hey,” he says, once he’s got his arms around Chris’s torso, once he’s taken in a big breath of musk and woodsmoke and sea-salt. He touches his forehead to Chris’s shoulder. Breathes, and feels himself settle.

He sighs happily when Chris’s hand lands in his hair.

“Hey yourself,” Chris murmurs. Touch of warmth to his temple. Sebastian shivers and presses closer.

“Long flight?”

“Yes,” Sebastian mutters. “Too long. I can never get used to it. I may start taking Elizabeth’s advice.”

“Okay,” Chris says, and his voice rumbles through Sebastian and tells him that he’s home.

He pulls away, to that beloved boyish grin. “So,” Sebastian says. “TRAPPIST-1.”

Quiet laughter. “I knew you were going to say that.”

“It’s big news.”

Chris’s grin gets even wider. “Best news, right?” He waves a hand in the direction of the telescope. “I was setting this up when you called, and I just decided not to move from here. Though I did get the pizza delivery. Mushroom and pepperoni, just the way you like it.”

Sebastian laughs. “With all that news about pineapple on pizza, I thought you were going to pull that trick on me, too.”

That gets him an affectionate tousle. 

He follows Chris over to sturdy chairs draped with soft blankets, and passes over the coffee cups. “Open those,” he directs, gently, after he’s eased his feet out of his shoes. “I got them with stars, too.”

“Wow,” Chris says, peering at the top of his coffee. “You asked for Orion in particular?”

“No.” The slice of pizza is gone in just a few bites. He must be hungrier than he actually feels. “I just asked them for constellations.”

“I’ll tip them, too, next time I’m passing through.” 

As Chris eats, Sebastian gets up and peers through the telescope’s eyepiece. He thinks he might be looking in the general direction of Aquarius. There aren’t a lot of easily-identifiable bright stars in that constellation -– and TRAPPIST-1 being a red dwarf, he won’t be able to see it at all. But it’s nice to dream.

“I wonder what it would be like to live on a planet with a red sky,” Chris murmurs, as if reading his thoughts.

“We’d have to redo all the nursery rhymes,” Sebastian says.

“That, too.”

A hand wraps around his, warm and strong and steady, and he leans into the scent and shape of Chris. “Imagine being able to see mountains on another planet, just as easily as looking up.”

“It would be something, that’s for sure.”

“I wish I could fly you there.”

“I know,” Chris says. “I had the same thought. You and me in a rocketship, blasting off to strange new worlds. Looking at new skies.”

“Only in our dreams for now,” and he straightens up. Curves a hand around the back of Chris’s neck. His heart leaps at the thrill of Chris tilting closer towards him. He is held in Chris’s orbit, securely, just as he holds Chris close. He sees stars in Chris’s eyes, even as they draw together and then fall into the first kiss, the second, and all of the rest.

(He wakes up later, stripped to his skin and love-sore, to the picked-out strains of “Fly me to the moon”, and he kisses a constellation of faint flowering starry-shaped bruises onto Chris’s back.)


End file.
